


Ashen Hands and Stormy Seas

by Dorkangel



Category: Inkheart (2008), Tintenwelt-Trilogie | Inkheart Trilogy - Cornelia Funke, Treasure Island & Related Fandoms, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Crossover, Family, Gen, Pirates, Possibly OOC, Rare Crossover, Treachery, ah whatever, traitors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:38:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1795771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'And so Meggie heard her father read aloud, for the first time in nine years, in a draughty old church.'<br/>What if, when Mo read aloud from 'Treasure Island', Dustfinger ended up inside the book? What if he met Long John Silver? What if, before there was Farid for him to watch over, there was Jim Hawkins?</p><p>EDIT: 05.23.2016: This work has been abandoned. Sorry. If anyone is interesting in continuing it, please contact me: if not, it will eventually be deleted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The equivalent of literary diarrhoea. This is what happens when Bilbiophiles get bored.

Trust Silvertongue to read him into the middle of an ocean. If he ever got out of this, he'd wring that man's damn neck. As if reading riches out of storybooks for Capricorn wasn't enough, Silvertongue's words appeared to have gotten away from him, and displaced the juggler in some story. Again.  
There was a ship on the horizon: the kind he'd known before, before that blasted sorcerer had ripped him from his story. It was not like the ones in Silvertongue's world, - heavy, metal things that by all rules if logic shouldn't sail - instead, made of wood and with a set of sails, and it was headed this way. Thank the gods Mortimer's silver tongue had thought to bring the chair he'd been sitting on too, and that it was strangely buoyant.  
"Here!" he yelled, "Over here!" and only just managed to hold onto consciousness long enough to see the name painted on the side of the ship.  
'The Hispaniola'.

Jim Hawkins was peeling potatoes when the cry sounded.  
"A man! There's a man in the water!"  
"Man overboard!"  
Long John Silver gave him a look that suggested he didn't know what was going on either, and he got to his feet and hurried out of the brig to find what out. He only managed to reach the deck in time to see a ragged looking man with scraggly blonde hair and three long, thin, pale scars painted across his face collapse on the deck.  
"Move out of the way," called the Captain, and everyone did. He knelt down next to the man, who coughed weakly and looked hazily around him. "A-am I dead?"  
"No sir, you are certainly alive."  
"Oh." He sounded vaguely surprised, and rolled his eyes at the curious looks focused on him. "Good." He sighed and it was clear that he couldn't keep awake much longer. "Curse that Silver..." breathed the man, and then collapsed.  
The men looked around, surprised. This castaway knew Silver?  
Of course, Dustfinger was referring to Silvertongue, but they had no way of knowing that.  
"Jim," yelled Captain Smollet. "Fetch Silver. No, wait, on second thoughts, bring this man to him."  
Jim nodded shyly. "Aye sir." Moving forward to help lift him, he took a good look. The man looked like a bad egg, or at least a dodgy one, but then so did Long John Silver, and the rest of the men. And he himself did too.

Dustfinger woke to a face above his: a hard, cruel face marked with harsh lines. "You know me, sailor?"  
Always one to think on his feet, he narrowed his eyes. "Never seen you before in my life."  
"You cursed my name up there, apparently."  
"I cursed a... friend of mine."  
"You said 'Curse that Silver'."  
Dustfinger laughed slightly, a bad habit of his at dangerous times. "And you're Silver, are you? Relax, I was referring to SilverTONGUE. A devious little trickster if ever there was one."  
"Ah." The man's harsh face softened and he leaned back, helping Dustfinger to sit up. "Well, I would be Silver. Long John Silver, at your service."  
Dustfinger winced a little, rubbing the back of his head. "Ah... They call me Dustfinger."  
Silver's eyebrows jumped up. "And why would they call you that? Not a book thief or something, are you?"  
He laughed again. A book thief... It was a good description of him, although not the reason for his name. "No. I'm a fire eater."  
"A what?"  
"A circus performer. I play with fire."  
"And what would you be doing out here? In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?"  
"My friend Silvertongue. I was looking for him, actually, he promised to get me home."  
"And?"  
"What?"  
"And what happened?"  
"And a bastard of epic proportions pressganged the both of us. Capricorn." It was close enough to the truth.  
"Haven't heard of that one," smiled Silver, yielding. "I'll be sure to avoid him."  
Dustfinger smiled back, but he was on his guard, having met this kind of man before. He was a manipulative one, definitely, playing to his strengths and Dustfinger's weaknesses. Or, at least, his perceived weaknesses. This man didn't know him.  
He opened his mouth to speak, to ask where he was, what was the year, what exactly was going to happen to him, but he was interrupted by a young boy, a little older than Meggie, with light brown hair pulled into a ponytail and once fine-ish but now dirty clothes. "Has he woken up, Mister Silver?" He noticed Dustfinger and went a little red. "Oh."  
"Not to worry, Jim." Ah, this man was definitely a manipulative type. His entire manner had changed around the boy, becoming open and affable.  
"This here's Dustfinger."  
A frown flickered over the boy's face, but he said nothing. Too proper. "An odd name, I know," said Dustfinger, giving what Meggie thought of as his Chesire Cat grin. "But then again, I am a circus freak." He leapt up and bowed theatrically, although he was still weak and he stumbled a little.  
"Fire eater and juggler at your service...?"  
"Jim, sir, Jim Hawkins." His eyes were wide with wonder, which Dustfinger appreciated, ever the performer.  
"Jim."  
"Jim, go back to your spud peeling," said Silver, with more than a hint of laughter in his voice. "I'm sure the Squire won't kick Dustfinger off the ship."  
"Aye, sir."  
Silver chuckled as the Fire eater lowered himself gingerly back onto the bunk, various bruises aching. "Thing for kids?"  
"That friend of mine, Silvertongue, he's got a daughter that lad's age. She seems to be entertained by it."  
"Fair enough. Ah, go back to sleep if you want. Captain Smollett might want you off, but he won't want you dead, and Squire Trelawney was fool enough to let ME on with barely a reference- though luckily for him I'm vaguely respectable. I'm the ship's cook, and Jim there's the ship's boy."  
"And what exactly is this ship?"  
"A voyage to somewhere in the Indies, I believe."  
"After what?"  
"We aren't pirates, if that's what worries you. It's a recovery mission for a previous one, you understand. The previous one left rather a lot of treasure on one of the islands."  
Dustfinger nodded slowly, and then paled as realisation dawned.  
Long. John. Silver. Pirates.  
Treasure Island.  
Oh hell. Meggie had been afraid of being read into this book, scared of Long John Silver appearing, a vicious pirate lashing out with his crutch.  
"Excuse me," he said, his throat suddenly dry and his voice cracking.  
"How far are we from your destination?"  
"A day at the most, Dustfinger."  
"Right."  
All Dustfinger's coward's instincts were alight. He couldn't stay onboard this ship. From what Silvertongue and his daughter had told him, there was going to be plenty of mutiny and murder in the next few days, and he couldn't afford to get involved.  
"Right." he said again, slowly. "Say, Silver, my leg's hurting something awful. You haven't got anything alcoholic?"  
Silver shrugged mischievously and got to his feet. With the aid of a crutch so well worn it was smooth, he limped to a cupboard and chucked Dustfinger a suspiciously dirty bottle of something vaguely amber-brown coloured. For a moment the Fire eater hesitated, then shrugged and downed it. He'd had FAR more suspicious, back in his own world, even if Mo's world had made him soft. Silver chuckled and joined him with another bottle of his own.  
"Don't tell Jim these are back here. Don't want a lad like him drunk off his arse."  
Dustfinger raised an eyebrow, trying to ignore the taste. "These'll do that?"  
Silver grunted. "Keep drinking."

An hour later, Dustfinger had found that all the evidence pointed, quite conclusively, to these bottles of drink quite definitely having the ability to get you drunk off your arse.  
"So," slurred Silver, who - apart from the voice - appeared to be holding it together quite well. "Scars. On yer face. How'd that happen?"  
Dustfinger made a dismissive gesture. "Me and a man with a knife got into a disagreement over a girl. My wife, actually."  
Silver nodded, pulling an appreciative face. "Pretty then, your wife?"  
"Very." Dustfinger sighed and leaned back, staring at the ceiling forlornly. "Hair as black as midnight and flashing eyes and spinning skirts and a voice like a nightingale. Roxanne."  
Silver laughed. "Sounds like quite a girl."  
"I've got two daughters too. Brianna and Rosanna, one of 'em wild like her parents, other the sweetest little thing you'd ever meet."  
Silver smiled kindly at him, and Dustfinger was too drunk to remember that this man was manipulative, a liar.  
"I got a wife too." said the Sailor. "Mall. And a bank account, and when I get home from this trip I'm going to go down to that bank and get my money and me and Mall'll live like lords and ladies."  
Dustfinger shook his head at that. "Don't care about being rich. Just want to get home..." The pain of thinking about his family made him groan and he took another swill of the drink.  
Now, Long John Silver may have been a pirate and a traitor and a murderer, but no one has ever accused his character of not listening to the troubles of others.  
"How long since you seen them? Roxanne, and Brian and whatserface."  
"Brianna and Rosanna." He looked hard at the sea-cook, his eyes filled with pain. "Seven years. Seven whole years."  
Silver's eyes widened. "All that time. No wonder you want to get home, mate."  
"Yeah, well. Not much chance of it now, unless my friend Silvertongue can find me."  
He prayed that Mortimer would.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's happening back home

Chapter 2 - Silvertongue

Meggie was transfixed. As Mo read, it was as if she was really there, she could smell the sea air and see the waves lapping against the sides of a distant ship...  
But then something flickered, something in the nature of reality, and coins suddenly came rolling over the tables and jingling over the flagstoned floor.  
Capricorn's men cheered, and then looked around nervously to make sure that they were still there in the church and not in the middle of some ocean somewhere.  
Meggie noticed something more. Where Dustfinger had been sitting on a wooden chair, guarded by a couple of the blackjackets, there was now nothing. She stood up sharply, calling out. "Where's Dustfinger?!"  
Capricorn rose smoothly, his pale face twisting into a cruel grin. His men silenced immediately.  
"An all round success, I find," he said in his soft, malicious voice.  
"I have the gold and that damned dirty-finger is gone."  
Mo's mouth dropped open and the book slipped from his fingers, crashing to the ground. He looked horrified. Capricorn noticed and raised an eyebrow. "Come now, Silvertongue," he hissed. "Read. Pick another book... 'Tales From the Thousand and One Nights' is next, is it not?"  
Mo shook his head, still shell-shocked from Dustfinger's disappearance. "No. I won't read for you, not again." He looked around desperately. "You have the gold, you have the book, please-"  
"No, Silvertongue. I want more gold, and what I want, I GET. It is, after all, your daughter's neck at stake. And the old woman too."  
Mo's gaze fixed on Meggie, who felt Basta step closer to her, his mint breath chillingly soft against her neck as he raised his knife to her throat.  
"Stop it. I'll read for you, but only once more. Only if you leave her alone."  
Capricorn raised a casual, dismissive hand, and Basta stepped away from Meggie.  
Mo picked up the book and hesitantly began to read, and once again it was magical, transfixing, and the air in Capricorn's church grew hot, and when Meggie rubbed her burning eyes she found sand sticking to her knuckles.  
The words offered up no riches. Something else slipped from the pages, though, something breathing, a creature made of flesh and blood. He was only a few years older than Meggie, skinny and dark skinned, wearing a dirty turban and a sky blue robe down to his feet. It was a moment before any of Capricorn's men noticed him, but when they did they started forward and grabbed the boy before he had a chance to move. He cried out but didn't speak, wide eyed and frightened. "Where's Fulvio?" called Basta, and Capricorn's men looked around, panicked.  
Capricorn only laughed. "Lock him up. We'll see if he can be any use to us later."  
They dragged him away but he still didn't say anything, looking around fearfully. Meggie felt sorry for him- he'd probably never seen green hills like those outside, or buildings like the church or the houses in the village. Her sympathy for him was, however, short-lived, as her worry for Dustfinger rose.  
"Mo, how are we going to save him?" she whispered as they were all roughly taken back to the stables/cells, but her father just shook his head.  
If he couldn't recover his own wife from the pages of a book, how could he save Dustfinger?

They sat in miserable silence in the cell. Meggie saw the frightened boy's face every time she closed her eyes, and Dustfinger's face every time she opened them.  
"Mo," said Elinor suddenly, turning around to face him. "I just had a tremendous thought."  
He looked at her, but didn't reply.  
"That copy of the 'Thousand and One Nights'- it's not an original. Even Inkheart must have been edited at some point. Translated into other languages."  
He frowned at her. "So?"  
"SO, stories can change. You could write something new and read it out. Change the ending."  
Mo stared into the air, staying perfectly still as his eyes lit up, shining. "Oh my god, you're right!"  
"What could we write with?" cried Meggie, standing up quickly, but Mo waved a hand at her to calm down. "We... we should test it first. With Dustfinger. See if we can call him back before we try to..."  
Meggie nodded. "How about here, in the dust? I'm sure it doesn't have to be pen and paper..."  
"Good. Right."  
Elinor knelt down next to them as they smoothed the thick layer of dirt and dust on the floor. "I know 'Treasure Island' pretty well. It's a favourite of mine."  
"I can read it, but... well, I'm not the greatest writer." admitted Mo, and Meggie only hesitated for a second before she leaned forward. "I can do it. Just tell me what's happening, and when."  
Elinor paused, frowning. "Ben Gunn. On the island, and he just asked for a piece of heaven."  
Meggie nodded and touched her finger to the dirt. Dusty-fingers to call back Dustfinger, she thought, and then began to write.  
'The hot sun on the island beat down heavily on Dustfinger's brow as he scowled, pushing Jim behind him.  
"What the hell do you mean, a 'piece of heaven'? I'm not an overly religious man...'


End file.
